Living Among the Things
by EirienFlower
Summary: After the First War, Remus finds his sudden loneliness difficult to bear. Challenge fic.


Title: Living among the things.

Fandom: Harry Potter

Rating: G

Disclaimer: I own none of the characters, settings, or anything else from the Harry Potter series.

_What happened is, we grew lonely_

_living among the things, _

_so we gave the clock a face, the chair a back, _

_the table four stout legs _

_which will never suffer fatigue. -_ from Lisel Mueller's Things.

Living among the things.

It was a simple charm really, nothing more than a competent NEWT level student could accomplish, with a few tweaks and adjustments. Simple, yet effective.

He chanted the few Latin words and flick-swished his wand in the correct pattern and-

"Hello?" said the teapot in a little high, slightly tinny voice.

(He'd decided to start small; what harm could a charmed teapot do?)

"Hello," said Remus, smiling slightly, and that was where it started.

The bookcase came next; a subtler variation on the original spell that turned it into an expert in literature and a great partner for discussion, until it got so overbearing and pretentious that the spell came off, and Remus moved on.

The bathroom mirror; a more complex spell this time, and the thing became a motherly soul that fussed over his appearance every morning until he got fed up of its constant suggestions for hiding the ragged scars across his face. Off she went.

The days fell into a pattern like squares on a quilt, all evenly-sized in shades of grey neverending. Comfortable, if not exciting. But who wanted excitement? Not he. Remus had had his fill of excitement.

He would drift through the grey days of anonymous dead-end jobs, and Floo home to be greeted warmly by, yes, his furniture, but the house had been so quiet so long that any greeting was welcome, and certainly it was easier than forging friendships in the outside world; what bookcase or mirror or teapot cared that one night a month he turned into a slavering beast?

He found a spell by which you could give an object certain traits: a chair became stubborn, an old Muggle picture of a distant aunt got an argumentative streak, and he was pleased with this until the day he came home to the screaming argument.

In truth, the incident shook him, and he wondered about the rights and wrongs of what he was doing enough to give up the work for two unbearably quiet days. Having always thought of himself as self-sufficient, to find himself longing so desperately for company was frightening. He set to work again.

This time he went into older magics, more complex spells. The hall clock was the candidate. His father had inherited it somehow; anyway, it was a nice old thing with a loud and metronomic tick that had kept Remus company on long quiet days alone in the house. Remus put into that spell a little of himself: his memories, his personality, the things that made him _him_ , and not anyone else, and the result was a_friend_, and if he experienced a few pangs of conscience over the exact workings of the spell (drops of his own blood were one ingredient, and blood-magic was at best only a few shades of grey away from Dark), they were always put to rest by the reasoning that it didn't harm anyone, did it?

On the morning after the third full moon alone - the fourth full moon alone since third year at Hogwarts, four moons in God-only-knew how many - Remus woke to find Albus Dumbledore at his bedside. He wondered at first if he were dreaming. Then he almost hoped he was.

"I have been having a rather interesting conversation with your clock," Dumbledore said.

"Oh?" Remus managed, while struggling to lift his battered body on one elbow. Through the haze of pain, he was mortifyingly aware of his lack of clothes under the blood-streaked bedsheet.

"A fascinating piece," Dumbledore continued, motioning for Remus to stay as he was. "You must tell me where you acquired it."

"I've quite forgotten," Remus breathed, lying back on his pillows with a dreadful feeling of unease despite the Headmaster's kindliness. "I think it was a present."

"Ah, never mind." Voice soft, smile knowing. "Severus brewed a healing potion," he went on, "it's quite powerful; it should help to ease the pain"

"Thank you, Headmaster."

"No trouble, my boy." A pause. "Are you well, Remus?"

"Yes, Headmaster."

Dumbledore shifted. "There is a place for you at Hogwarts, if you want it."

Remus would have stiffened and turned away but for his mutinous body. "I don't want charity," he said, with a note of steel under the weariness.

"Not charity, Remus. Just an offer, from a friend."

Remus was tempted to say something along the lines of_you old fool, what's your friendship to me _orw_hat good have you ever done me _but he didn't, merely shook his head weakly.

"Hogwarts' door is always open to you, you know."

"It isn't lonely here, once you get used to it."

"You know where I am. Owl, Floo, broomstick - although as I recall you were never one for flying."

Remus chuckled faintly. "No, that was James and -" He stopped.

Dumbledore leaned closer, his voice gentle and his eyes full of pity. "We must remember the good times, Remus, not dwell on our losses."

Remus blinked and thought bitterly,y_ou said that at the funeral, and you wrote it to me in letters, and you tell me it now and it still doesn't mean anything because they're still dead and Sirius is still a traitor and I lie here bleeding on my bed in my dead parents' house with nobody but my talking clock, _and wasn't that just the most pathetic thing? He wanted to laugh.

"Yes Headmaster," he said instead.

"Would you like me to bring you some tea?" Dumbledore began again in a voice as bright as if they hadn't just been talking about Remus' murdered friends.

"No, thank you. I'm very tired. I think I should rest." Perhaps Remus' voice was a little colder than was polite.

"Yes, of course. I'll leave you, then." Dumbledore rose. A shaft of pale sunlight lanced into the room and lit his hair radiant silver, and Remus thought with a little guilty pang how old he must be, how tired of playing shepherd to a generation of wolves. "The potion is on your bedside table, should you need it, and you know where I am, should you need me."

"I'll be fine. Thank you."

"If you're sure." He turned to leave, was halfway out of the door before Remus said,

"Harry."

Dumbledore stopped. Remus thought he saw the broad shoulders sag just a fraction, but went on unrepentantly.

"How is Harry? Is he happy?"

"He is safe," Dumbledore said simply, and left the room. Remus listened to his slow, firm step on the stairs, and then a muffled conversation between him and the clock, and then the house was silent again. Remus waited long enough to be sure the Headmaster was gone before he reached out and heaved the little bottle of potion at the door, where it smashed and spattered the floor with shards of glass and viscous globs of liquid.

And what good did that do?

He slept fitfully the rest of the day, and a good portion of the next, and woke with the shadows stretched long into the room. He felt better, if a little muzzy-headed from oversleeping. The worst of the pain was gone, and he managed to drag his stiff and aching body downstairs.

In the hall, the clock said, "Moony!"

Frozen.

"That's what they called you. They called you Moony. Because you're a werewolf."

Can't move - can't - it hadn't the right - nobody had the right to call him - nobody but them - to say that name -

"They called you Moony. I remember that now. Shall I call you Moony? They were animagi, weren't they? You called them Prongs, and Wormtail, and Pad-"

He hardly realised what he'd done until it was done. He hardly realised that he'd smashed the thing until his hands ached with splinters, and the poor face of the thing lay looking balefully up at him from beneath one foot. He'd ground shards of glass into the wooden floor. Without realising it.

And he was calm. The calm frightened him more than anything else. For the first time he felt how lonely it was to be utterly silent within yourself.

The twisted hands of the clock reached up to him, reproachful.

It was a clock. An object. A_thing_ . Nothing more.

And the house around him, and the empty land around the house, and all the world it seemed, was silent.

* * *

**AN:** Thanks for reading. This was written for Memorycharm's April poetry challenge.

Feedback is loved and cherished.


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